It is abundantly clear from the above that the Panchayats and Municipalities shall be the statutory planning authority for rural and urban areas. Such plans shall be coordinated between urban and rural areas by the District Planning Committee to prepare a draft district plan for approval by the State Government. But the initial plan must emanate from the local governments. The State Town & Country Planning Department now has no jurisdiction to initiate the local planning process.

This has major implications. Presently, the State Town & Country Planning Department is imposing its plans, granting planning permission and changing land use with hardly any involvement of the citizens. Public hearings, if held, are usually a formality. If municipalities plan, they will have to hold numerous statutory public hearings and invited consultants. And if there is stiff opposition from the citizens, they will have to change the proposal.

To facilitate interface between the political system and the civil society, the District Planning Act should provide for Arts & Heritage Commissions with the Mayor or Chairman Zila Panchayats as chairperson, an eminent citizen as vice chairperson for handling day to day work, and distinguished professionals and sensitive citizens as members. Such commissions will nurture local accountability and rational decision-making.

While granting planning permission for housing, multi-storeyed flats or commercial complexes, a local government will, as in well managed countries, levy planning permission charges adequate to cover the liability created for augmenting external infrastructure such as water supply, sewerage and major roads. Absence of such an enabling power is one of the main reasons why our municipalities and panchayats have become financially crippled. The Arts & Heritage Commission can also impose qualitative conditions such as, external finishes, landscape, conservation of natural water systems, and works of art.

A major disaster of faulty planning has been damage to water bodies and water courses. Water bodies function as water balancing systems. Many water bodies have been filled up or polluted, water courses made degraded "ganda nalas"! Participatory planning at the local level alone can prevent this in future and facilitate restoration of old water systems. Water has become a highly critical issue.

The instrument of planning permission also offers interesting opportunities for urban renewal with minimal land acquisition. Cities can prepare attractive landscape cum civic design proposals for rejuvenating polluted rivers and nurturing riverside development, or other degraded civic areas, and recover the expenditure incurred by levy of appropriate planning permission charge on the developers who consolidate the land for redevelopment as per the urban design. Land acquisition, if at all, should be minimal. Land owner will get a good price from the developer. Everybody will be happy!

As required by Article 243ZD, some states have promulgated District Planning Committee Acts but retained the authority to prepare local plans with the State Town & Country Planning Department. This is totally unconstitutional. There is now a serious conflict between the Town & Country Planning Acts on the one hand, and the Constitution and the District Planning Committee Act, on the other.

The Union and state governments can now devolve funds only through the processes of central and state finance commissions, and not through schemes with conditions and stipulations under centralised planning. Soviet type centralised planning is unscientific and wasteful. It has now become unconstitutional and has been discarded in the economic sector. It must be forthwith discarded in the social and environmental sectors too.

To resolve this conflict, the Town & Country Planning Act should be repealed and the District Planning Committee Act upgraded as District & State Planning Act by adding a chapter providing for coordination of draft district plans with the state level infrastructure such as state highways and water systems, as draft state plans. Such draft state plans will then be coordinated by the Central Town & Country Planning Organisation (TCPO) with the national level infrastructure such as national highways, power grids and telecom, to prepare a national plan. Such planning will be a reiterative ongoing process, not a Soviet type five year exercise covering social and economic issues without relating them to environmental resources and spatial issues.

Chief Minister, Madhya Pradesh, has taken a progressive step in upgrading the District Planning Committee as District Government headed by a State Minister in charge of the district. Intra-district decisions of all departments are now taken by the district government and authenticated as orders of the state government by the District Collector designated ex officio Additional Secretary to the State Government.

The State Town & Country Planning Department is however still handling local planning. As Member of the State Planning Board, the author has initiated a dialogue on the lines outlined in this paper. Madhya Pradesh may well be the first state to adopt the constitutional mandate of entrusting local planning to local governments.

Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, is endowed with two huge lakes. They are under stress. Jabalpur had nearly 100 water bodies. Now, there are just about ten. One has recently been converted as a stadium! Khan River (originally Khyati, a tributary of holy Kshipra) of Indore has a number of heritage structures on its banks. With its catchments built upon, it is now a polluted drain. Swarnarekha of Gwalior, a regional river that provides irrigation both up and down stream, is heavily polluted. Most of the holy sapt-sagar, the seven water bodies of Ujjain, are polluted or dried. Bhopal wants Narmada water. Indore lifts Narmada water, now wants to further augment it. Some states are on the verge of desertification. Politicians and planners need to address such basic environmental issues.